The 27th United Nations Climate Change Conference or Conference of the Parties (COP27) overran its scheduled end by two days as its delegates struggled to close a deal on a ‘loss and damage fund’. However, disappointingly, there were no real advancements on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. There is every likelihood, therefore, that by 2100 global temperatures will surpass 1.5 degrees celsius (C), the warming limit set in the historic Paris Agreement signed in 2015. Whether they will climb to the dreaded 2.4 degrees C will depend on human behaviour, which as of right now does not augur well.
The good news is that representatives from nearly 200 countries, including more than 100 heads of state and government, agreed to set up a fund to respond to loss and damage incurred by poor countries associated with the adverse effects of climate change. According to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which published an unedited version of the pact that was signed on Sunday, the new fund will assist “developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change, in responding to loss and damage…” The language of the agreement specified that the fund’s mandate would be loss and damage. Further, the text prescribed that a transitional committee was to be established and its recommendations on operationalizing the fund would be considered and adopted at sessions scheduled for November – December 2023.
The truth is that as far as good news goes, the pact could be considered wishy-washy. As it stands right now, it does not designate which countries will make deposits into the fund or how much, nor does it detail the developing nations that will be granted financing from it. Also up in the air is whether beneficiary countries will be required to prove definitively that the loss or damage sustained was a direct result of climate change, rather than poor infrastructure, for example.
Perhaps the omissions highlighted above and others will be hammered out by the transitional committee and appear in the final edited version of the pact; one can only hope. It is worth noting here that many countries have traditionally been less than disposed to contributing to funding what could be considered global welfare projects. Several have made commitments in the past which they failed to keep. One must bear in mind also that there is a global economic slowdown and pundits have been tossing around the word recession a lot recently.
Having already segued into the bad news, it is now pertinent to add that there was no commitment made at COP27 to phase out fossil fuels, which at this stage is the only surefire way to effectively begin curbing climate change. Heads of governments and representatives of several nations – the UK, New Zealand and EU countries among them – expressed disappointment at this. However, it was Colombia’s new President Gustavo Petro who bravely announced that his country would begin to transition away from oil and gas. He had campaigned on affording Colombians “a green, not a black future”, where coal, oil and gas would remain underground.
News outlets reporting from Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, where the conference was held, divulged that the fossil fuel lobby was out in full force, with the BBC describing it as seeming “at times like a fossil fuel trade fair”. The conglomerates that have doubled down on exploiting oil and gas or mining coal, despite the knowledge proliferating about the dangers of using these fuels, no doubt left COP27 content that their cups will continue to run over for the foreseeable future. What is unfortunate is that some countries, ours included, who believe this is their time to amass ‘fortunes’ by exploiting their oil, gas and coal reserves, as others have done in the past, probably feel vindicated by the conference’s outcome. The opposite should be the case.
The fact is that climate change threatens every aspect of life as we know it. Droughts, rising sea levels and mass extinction of species are what we have to look forward to on this planet if we continue to mark time rather than take decisive action. According to the Cambridge English Dictionary, a cop out is an instance of avoiding a commitment or responsibility. For all the positive press the COP27 received over its historic loss and damage fund, it was in effect a cop out.
